I love the opportunity to create personalities, analyze continuity and engagement, and explore emotional journeys. This is a selection of writing for independent and collaborative projects.
Quests
Inspiration:
Bring Up The Party
I used parts of “Bring Up The Party” to dive further into Fallout 4‘s Creation Kit. Since the dialogue is used out of the context of a larger story, I created an independent quest mechanic to “inspire” the player: a mysterious party has hacked the player’s Pip-Boy, and is delivering shocks to extort work! There are still some loose ends to tie up, but it is a complete and fairly bug-free quest (I did all the voice work, for better or worse).
This is a video overview of an early version of the little quest – and my amateur voice acting – along with a few of the notable challenges and lessons along the way.
First Quest: Learning the Creation Kit [YouTube]
To better match the quality of Fallout 4, this quest’s characters need more voiced content like idle lines and combat barks. I wrote these, but did not include them in the basic version of the quest.
Barks & Flavor Lines for Bring Up The Party [PDF]
Download the mod from Bethesda.net or Nexus; read the file descriptions for how to get started.
Inspiration: Bring Up The Party [PC, Bethesda.net]
Inspiration: Bring Up The Party [PC, Nexus]
Inspiration: Bring Up The Party [XB1, Bethesda.net]
Hitting the Mark (WIP)
“Been laid up ‘ere over a moon, just sittin’ on me arse like a dandy prince.”
I outlined this simple quest to motivate new Gran Skrea Online MMO players to explore the surrounding area, meet a nearby faction, and try the archery and crafting systems. It was also an exercise in characterizing an accent through a text-only dialogue system. Half of the dialogue is written, but I started a full-time position and had to withdraw from the project.
Hitting the Mark [PDF]
Sunny Times (Pitch)
“He has small big toes, if you know what I mean…”
This quest was driven by a simple idea: bickering elders are funny. I created an outline of the quest intended as a pitch for an indie MMO, but it is adaptable to different settings.
A small village once did good business because of its famous sausagemaker, but the economy collapsed after he died. He didn’t take his recipe to the grave, though: the recipe was split between the two farmers that grew the secret spices. The problem is that those farmers have been bitter, immovable rivals for decades, and they would rather see the town wither than reconcile. Can you make the sausage great again?
Sunny Times outline [PDF]
Dialogue
Exit Interview
“The application of force, however judicious it may be, is one of our defining tools. It’s also a trait of the worst armies and gangs throughout history. Why should people believe we’re any different from them?”
Twine is becoming the leading tool for interactive storytelling, so I tried it out as a dialogue exercise. I first roughed out the outline and major responses on paper, then put it in Twine question-by-question.
Exit Interview
Bring Up The Party
“I’m Hoondoon, the one for chit-chat. Some call me ‘Honcho’, but no one’s the boss – hah-HAA except the GOODTIME! AAAOW! Bop-bop!”
I wanted to write dialogue for a quirky and energetic character, so I created this interactive scene around getting into an unexpected party. (There is one circular path to fix.)
Bring Up The Party
Mister Blue Sky
“Dandy day, pal! Good to see another go-getter going out to get it!”
Mister Blue Sky is the eternal optimist, possessed by enthusiastic and unflinching faith in the American dream. His story is told over a series of short encounters for a tabletop RPG; he’s the kind of character players would encounter on a long, dusty road or far-flung outpost. Each line includes a reading note.
Mister Blue Sky [PDF]
A Visit to Greystoke
“Alright, we have a shot at something big and we can’t screw this up. Stick to the plan, listen to what I say, and we won’t be in jail tonight.”
Prompted with “a visit to the bank”, this short heist was a submission for a Telltale Games writer’s workshop. It offers two paths, the “big con” and “crafty sneak”, but is almost entirely linear along those paths. The heist(s) work pretty well, and I think I added some suitable absurdity, but it could be more fun with some iteration.
A Visit to Greystoke
Mysterious Reunion
“How much did you fuck up to get knocked down to errand boy?”
This two-character scene was primarily to practice screenplay formatting, as well as characterization through dialogue given the limited stage direction of a typical screenplay. It’s also an experiment in introducing the tensions of multiple conflicts while limiting exposition for mystery. Are they performers? Spies? Prostitutes? The scene moves along well for about three minutes, but the dialogue itself needs more bite.
Mysterious Reunion [PDF]
Story development & world building
Area Design Doc:
Bal Sardan
While contributing to indie MMO Gran Skrea Online (née The Immortal Rift), I created the area design outline for a dark marsh and the city within; this was based on a few short conversations with the developer that conceived the area. I wrote the area description loosely, to avoid constraining the area artists, but placed more detail in the society to help unify quest writing.
The Marshes and Bal Sardan [PDF]
The team liked that document format, so before departing the project I created a template for future contributors:
Area design template [PDF]
Unified History:
A Matter of Dimension
My friends had an idea for A Matter of Dimension, an exciting sci-fi video series with an ambitious story involving numerous characters, settings, technologies, and dimensions. On top of that, they were dreaming of an episodic adventure game to parallel the series! Listening to their ideas was a test of patience, though, as they were caught between putting together a solid story and just thinking of whiz-bang sci-fi trailer action.
I ran an informal workshop with them to corral their ideas (the power of 3×5 cards!) and assemble a rough storyline to start the series. Because this story involved epochs-old alien civilizations, I sat down on my own and put together the history of the conflict to establish the universe and its continuity.
Background
Most characters and the rough present-day plot existed before I became involved. I wrote the backstory of humanity and the alien races, detailed humanity’s secret abilities and the role of technology, incorporated some real-world science, and outlined the parallel story that would drive the companion game.
Note that these timelines are development documents intended for people familiar with the content. Here’s a quick summary:
A circle of pioneering scientists and engineers are working on different projects for their respective organizations: one group is working on anti-gravity technology, while the other is researching deep dream visualization. When they decide to exchange technologies they trigger an accident that reveals a secret of humanity and embroils us in a conflict of universal scale: human dreams are a glimpse of multi-dimensional reality, and that ability makes us a target for an alien empire.
Alien conflict history
The Travelers (good guys) versus Alpha-Omega’s empire.
Human & alien history
The events leading up to humanity’s involvement in an alien conflict.
Story engagement critiques
The Fallout series is one of my favorites: they tell great stories about society and crisis in a fantastic but believable universe.
Everyone’s War + Mod
That is the seed of this narrative problem: The soldier saw war firsthand. The lawyer did not.
Fallout 4‘s player character backstories rarely surface during gameplay, but I still found that the different male and female backgrounds affected my emotional engagement.
Everyone’s War: Backstory and engagement in Fallout 4
I also created a very small mod (68KB!) to restore Nora’s veteran background, as well as start learning the Creation Kit.
Get the “Everyone’s War” mod
Rude Awakening
Instead of just dropping you into a wasteland, Fallout games have gone a step further by setting up a foundation on which you can more easily project your own life in to that of the PC’s.
For as much as I liked Fallout: New Vegas, I was troubled by its storyline and my emotional investment in it. I wrote an analysis which defines an archetype for Fallout that guides the story and the player’s emotional connection to the game.
Rude Awakening: Why Fallout: New Vegas felt incomplete
Character profiles
My friends and I were excited for the Shadowrun fifth edition manual, as we’d played and enjoyed the third edition. We then struggled through character creation and some runs before we realized the fifth edition’s problems were more trouble than they were worth. It’s a shame, too, because I liked the PC and NPC I’d written. (The character spreadsheet is my own creation.)
Two-Blink Tafari
He still gets flashes of distant memories once in a while, though it’s usually difficult to remember them: a piece of light-and-dark layered cake; slender, clean light-brown hands tying a child’s shoe; running toward a distant light.
Tafari was to be my technomancer, a new class with great character possibilities. Sadly, there were many gaps and problems with its rules and it was disappointing to not explore this character further.
Tafari’s Character Sheet
Rolla
If B.A. Baracus and Queen Latifah had an Ork baby.
Our runner crew needed a supporting character to fill in some technical skills. Rolla is mostly an outline, but she has enough detail to make for a promising non-player character.
Rolla’s Character Sheet